MR. GREELEY'S CONFESSION.

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if not entirely approved by public opinion, was among the early usages of New England; and from this to negro slavery-the slavery of any variety of pagan barbarisms was an easy transition. That the slaves in the Eastern colonies were few, and mainly confined to the sea-ports, does not disprove this statement. The harsh climate, the rocky soil, the rugged topography of New England, presented formidable, though not impassable barriers to slaveholding. Her narrow patches of arable soil, hemmed in between bogs and naked blocks of granite, were poorly adapted to cultivation by slaves. The labor of the hands without the brain, of muscle divorced from intelligence, would procure but a scanty livelihood on those bleak hills. He who was compelled for a subsistence to be by turns farmer, mechanic, lumberman, navigator, and fisherman, might possibly support one slave, but would be utterly ruined by half a dozen. Slaveholding in the Northern States was rather coveted as a social distinction, a badge of aristocracy and wealth, than resorted to with any idea of profit or pecuniary advantage."

Under such circumstances as have been stated, it is certainly not at all surprising that constant friendly intercourse, both social and commercial, was cultivated between the various American colonies, whether in the northern or southern divisions of the continent; that they should have cordially aided each other in repulsion of Indian hostilities; that, under the advice and protection of the parent country, they should have sturdily cooperated in the defense of all colonial territory against invasions from abroad, and in even attempting the con

quest of adjoining territory belonging to France, in what is now known as Canada, at the period when the kings of France and of Great Britain were warring for exclusive dominion on this continent. Nor should we be astonished, either, to find that, long before the Declaration of American Independence in the year 1776, there should have been more than one attempt to bring about a confederation of the American colonies under the protection of the British crown.

It is sufficiently apparent, one would think, that, up to the era of our deliverance from British rule, no fancied heterogeneousness of institutions, or fixed repugnances of opinion or sentiment, seriously divided those whose posterity were destined soon to form a still closer compact of union, and, by the common dangers and sufferings of a long and sanguinary war, to become endeared to each other by ties of the most solid and enduring character. Such is the unconquerable truth of history, let him deny it who may.

It has been contended by some, of late, that the Declaration of Independence itself asserted a fundamental principle of universal application even at the time of its adoption, which was understood by our forefathers as drawing a serious line of distinction between those citizens of the newly-formed American Union who were then friendly to the continued existence of African slavery, and those who were unfriendly to it; and as the greater part of the former have been constantly located in the states of the South, it has been sagely inferred that a permanent conflict of sentiment between slaveholders and non-slaveholders was thus recognized from the beginning, and

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

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among those who had just declared themselves one people, both in peace and in war.

Persons who undertake to

make good this position assume that, when the authors of the Declaration of Independence declared "all men are created equal," they meant to include the sons of Africa as well as those of European origin; and these controversialists do thus contend, in the face of the undeniable fact, that no such interpretation of the instrument was either suggested or thought of any where in Christendom until within a few years past; and notwithstanding the facts that the efforts of the Emancipationists were not, until very recently, professedly founded upon any such overstrained view; that language substantially similar is used in the Virginia Bill of Rights, penned by the celebrated George Mason, one of the most open and strenuous supporters of slavery who participated in the formation of the Federal Constitution; and that Mr. Jefferson himself, the acknowledged draughtsman of the Declaration of Independence, though friendly to the adoption of a system of gradual emancipation, never in any way indicated that the universal freedom spoken of was absolutely provided for in this important document, or that such a thing was even thought of or suggested. The truth is, that Mr. Jefferson, in his works, p. 170, vol. i., asserts the fact that there were persons in Congress at the time, both from the North and from the South, who were not only not hostile to the continuation of African slavery as then existing, but who were unwilling to embody in the Declaration any language strongly denunciatory even of the continued importation of slaves from the coast of Africa; his words on this point being as follows: "The clause, too,

reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for, though their people had few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."

The conclusion to which the mind is irresistibly driven by the mass of evidence adduced is, that the American people, at this early period of their history, were in all respects sufficiently homogeneous, both in regard to local interests and in relation to all questions likely to arise under any common government which they might choose. thereafter to establish, as to justify a reasonable hope of reciprocal kindness and permanent concord between them. So far is it, indeed, from being true that any such "antagonisms imbedded in the very nature of our heterogeneous institutions" then existed, as the accomplished author of "The American Conflict" has so emphatically asserted, that it may be safely affirmed that, strictly speaking, African slavery did not any where at that period exist in an institutional form; in relation to which point I shall again cite the language of one who will ever be regarded as the highest authority, in reference to a question of this nature, by all men whose minds are not altogether given up to sectional prejudice or party bigotry. Mr. Webster, in his speech delivered in the national Senate in the year 1848, upon the "EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY FROM THE TERRITORIES," uses the following language:

"The Constitution of the United States recognizes it

(slavery) as an existing fact, an existing relation between the inhabitants of the Southern States. I do not call it an institution, because that term is not applicable to it; for that term seems to imply a voluntary establishment. When I first came here, it was a matter of frequent reproach to England, the mother country, that slavery had been established upon the colonies by her against their consent, and that which is now considered a cherished institution was then regarded as, I will not say an evil, but an entailment on the colonies by the policy of the mother country against their wishes."

The state of public sentiment in regard to slavery in the colonies remained the same throughout the war of the Revolution. With a few exceptions here and there, there were none in the South who were anxious to extend its existence and influence, and there were as few in the North who were inclined to interfere with or complain of its presence wheresoever it had already taken root; so that, when the men of '76 began to take measures for their future safety in the separate and independent condition which they had deemed it wise to assume, they were prepared, with the fullest deliberation, to adopt articles of confederation which in terms provided for the establishment of a "perpetual Union" between those who had then become fraternally associated in the war against the mother country. Nor is it apparent that there was any material change in the feelings and opinions of any portion of the people of the United States in regard to African Slavery up to the year 1789, when the Federal Constitution was adopted. In proof of this fact, I shall again lean upon the authority of Mr. Webster, whose ac